New England Quakers Wrestle with War Tax Resistance

From reading my blog lately, you might think that American Quaker war tax
resistance stopped 125 years ago. But, of course, it’s still going on today. A
couple of reports from the recent New England Yearly Meeting of Friends make
note of how Meetings like this continue to struggle with the issue:

At Teeksa Photography, Skip Schiel mourned
at what he saw to be a half-hearted interest in such issues:

[L]ike a person with an ailing stomach or chronic arthritis, not life
threatening, simply annoying, distracting, worrisome, who then dilutes
focus on issues in the wider world, NEYM turns inward, year after year. Our
stated theme was “War, God Help Us!” and some like Ernestine Buscemi in
the keynote and Peter Crysdale in the bible half hours attempted to refer
to it. Despite their attempts, little attention was directed to societal
issues such as the war in Iraq, the threat of war with Iran, torture,
erosion of civil liberties, environmental desecration, racism, to name a
few of the pressing problems of our day. We (I say we inaccurately — I
attended only one hour of one business session, not boycotting, just
displeased and choosing to devote myself to other matters during that
period) passed several minutes about the Iraq war and torture, but I’ve
heard these were relatively weak, mostly for internal communication
(other meetings and Quaker bodies), lacking substantial discussion, let
alone controversy and debate which might stir the pot more, and without
action components. Lo and horrors should we ever call for tax resistance
or surrounding the Pentagon or joining the equivalent of the Poor
Peoples’ Campaign — or freeing one’s slaves.

And on a more encouraging note, he quotes from the opening prayer of
outgoing presiding clerk Christopher McCandless:

“God, help us: Help us to be Your people, a people of peace in a world
awash in the imagery and realities of war. Forgive us our complicity, by
our corporate silence and the taxes we render unto America, in our
nation’s headlong prosecution of military responses to the violence in
the world.…”

Will T. at Growing Together in the Light
mentions tax resister Paul Hood’s talk at the meeting:

Paul Hood gave a lengthy testimony of his experiences as a marine in the
Pacific in World War Ⅱ and how he was eventually led to being a tax
resister. Although he hasn’t paid Federal income taxes since the Vietnam
War, he found to his surprise that he was eligible to a tax rebate check
this year. After giving it some thought he filed a tax return and has now
decided to give his rebate check to the Yearly Meeting.

This article examines the current legal structure allowing rewards for
informants who provide information to assist the
IRS
in the enforcement of the tax laws.
IRS
data suggest that informants are a cost-effective means of enhancing tax
enforcement. The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of
2006 introduced a separate whistleblower
award program that provides even higher rewards (up to 30 percent of the
amount collected) and greater certainty in the payment of such rewards,
including a process for enforcing reward claims against the government
through litigation in the Tax Court. Although the whistleblower
provisions may enhance tax enforcement, they also raise significant
issues concerning taxpayer privacy and
IRS
secrecy in the context of lawsuits to enforce reward claims. Moreover,
prospects for large financial rewards without comprehensive attention to
eligibility constraint may effectively induce prospective whistleblowers
to breach other legal or ethical responsibilities. The article argues
that these important issues deserve more careful attention from
Congress, and should not be relegated to administrative or judicial
development.

Remember that Army recruiter who called up a high school student and left
a message on his answering machine threatening him with arrest if
he didn’t come in to get recruited? And remember how when this scandal hit
the press, the Army shut down their recruiting stations nationwide for a
day to retrain recruiters in appropriate methods?
What happened
next? “just two months later… instead of punishing
Sgt. Kelt, the Army had
promoted him to the role of station commander at a neighboring recruiting
station. That meant he would supervise and train other recruiters on how
to do the job.” And recruiters continue to lie to potential recruits — telling them that they’ve signed binding contracts to join the Army when
they’ve done no such thing, and threatening them with arrest if they
decide against joining up.

You may notice that I’ve made some minor changes to how the site presents
itself. I’ve long been reluctant to rely too much on JavaScript because of
cross-browser compatibility issues and such, but these days that seems like
less of an issue. I’ve begun to add some JavaScript-based bells and whistles.
I don’t have a well-equipped test laboratory here at Picket
Line headquarters, so if you notice something amiss please
drop me a line.

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